User Personality Matching with a Hands-Off Robot for Post-stroke Rehabilitation Therapy

This paper describes a hands-off therapist robot that monitors, assists, encourages, and socially interacts with post-stroke users engaged in rehabilitation exercises. We investigate the role of the robot’s personality in the hands-off therapy process, focusing on the relationship between the level of extroversion-introversion of the robot and the user. The experiments map the extraversion-introversion personality dimension and the spectrum of therapy styles that range from challenging to nurturing. The experimental results provide first evidence for the preference of personality matching in the assistive domain.